The 2010 Legends of LeMons: Ununhexium Medal Winners!
We’ve seen the Unununium and Ununquadium Legends of LeMons, but we mustn’t leave out the nearly-as-amazing Ununhexium Medal Winners!
Tranny Lumberjacks
Swamp Jews From Hell
Fall Guy Stuntman Association
OxyMorons
Team Operation
They built a fully functional game of Operation on their car’s hood. Goldschlager bottles, bags of Skittles, beef jerky “snuff,” and other so-called goodies were available for the taking…
…for judges with steady hands. Here we see Judge Jonny going for the Jäger Arm.
Jim Hall(ing) Ass Racing
The Tools
Chicken & Waffles
Corsa Nostra
Double Jeopardy
But that alone won’t get you an Ununhexium Medal. Double Jeopardy managed to steal the Heroic Fix trophy from mighty Police Brutality (who appeared to have the HF trophy in the bag), when they removed two and then three pistons and rods from their bearing-spinning Iron Duke, keeping the car on the track long past the point at which any [s]sane[/s] lesser team would have packed up and gone home.
Team Sensory Assault
Then there’s their godawful race-car hauler, which is based on the chassis of a huge 5th-wheel RV that burned to the axles. Note the plywood floor and very high center of gravity. What could possibly go wrong?
The main reason Sensory Assault gets Legend of LeMons status, however, is their extremely redneck burnout-enhancing LeMons Line-Lock device, which allowed the team to make the No Problem Raceway Dragstrip locals’ feeble attempts at burnouts look pathetic. Check it out:
The B-Team
In honor of their most [s]loathed[/s] beloved LeMons Supreme Court judge, they’ve gone with a “Kill Phil” theme. So far I’m still alive, but I’m sure it’s only a matter of a few more totally undeserved black flags before they make good on the promise implied by their theme.
And I’m looking forward to that, after having my optic nerves traumatized for life by the image that the British member (member, get it?) of the B-Teamers left on my BumperCam at the Phoenix race. They very kindly provided a framed, signed print of the “SchvantzCam Incident” for LeMons HQ.
Black Iron Racing
The King Lamb Jeepney looked great on the track.
It would fit right in on the streets of Manila, though it might not have quite the passenger capacity of a Land Cruiser-based Jeepney.
Prickstine
Angry Hamster Racing
However, the car that I consider far and away the best-engineered machine in LeMons history suffered from many, many problems.
They switched from Magna V65 to CBR1000 power mid-season, but that just switched the focus of problems from engine to driveline. Rumor has it that the Hamsters are building something crazier, yet more reliable, for the 2011 season.
Sgt. Schultz
Which makes the S500’s win at the Capitol Offense race nothing short of miraculous. Big cars, regardless of their level of power and/or Teutonic engineering prowess, have a helluva time avoiding black-flag-attracting contact with other cars on the race track, so this achievement (plus the great costumes) earns Team Sgt. Schultz the Ununhexium.
Schumacher Taxi Service
Türbö Schnitzel
We’ve always loved their psychotics-in-lederhosen-mit-beer-steins schtick, and their supremely unreliable car has earned them at least one Heroic Fix award. Then the Schnitzels, no doubt knocking back some knockwurst in their Atlanta bunker, decided to fire up the cutting torch and fix the problem.
Yep, that’s a turbocharged Ford 351 Windsor V8, complete with blow-through ammo-box-enhanced Holley carb. They also replaced the Merkur rear end with one torn from a Toyota Supra. I’d like to say that the Merkur went on to dominate the race, but it didn’t quite work out that way— it blew its differential while driving at 5 MPH through downtown Camden and didn’t get a whole lot of track time. Still, that engine swap earns the team the Ununhexium Medal!
Stupid But Tough Racing
OK, maybe they’re not exactly atomic scientists. Stupid But Tough is actually a bunch of Tennessee Homer Simpsons who make their living juggling plutonium ingots at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and their Penalty Box antics and all-night, beer-swilling wrenchathons (have I mentioned that the small-block Chevrolet engine is surpassed only by the Mitsubishi Astron for LeMons unreliability?) keep the LeMons Supreme Court justices entertained all weekend long.
Scuderia Fluffball
Adopted By Jets
Sin City Lemons
Here’s Judge Armand giving it a spin.
King Henry the V8th
The King Henry the V8th Caddy drove down from Seattle to Thunderhill Raceway under its own power. The transmission was emitting a terrible scream as the royal purple machine prepared to race, so we figured it would be good for 7, 8 laps, tops. Not so! It ran all weekend and took the Index of Effluency!
POS Racing, aka The F’ed Up Express
That’s one 3rd-place, two 2nd-place, and— finally, at the final West Coast race of the season— a first-place finish. POS Racing raced clean and stayed black-flag free (with the exception of that incident at Sears Point in which their driver almost ran over Chief Perp Lamm’s parents in the Penalty Box), and eventually managed to beat seemingly unstoppable Eyesore (by a half-lap) at Buttonwillow.
Team Skid Steer Bobcat
Hoonatic Racing aka The One Lap Integra
John was also part of several other [s]exercises in futility[/s] character-building LeMons teams, with perhaps 10 laps between them for the entire season. Here’s Judge Anna letting us know what she thinks.
The Van Buren Boys
Scuderia Arruginito
Team Resignation
Rhinestone Nixon campaign jewelry! You know why they used 74 for their car number? That was Nixon’s jersey number when he was on the Whittier College football team.
Their Supreme Court Bribe was a bottle of Johnny Walker in a hollowed-out Nixon biography.
Team Resignation’s Escort didn’t do so well on the track, but they managed to turn a Watergate-style setback into a Checkers Speech-grade triumph by grabbing the Heroic Fix trophy.
Substandard Racing
At the Laissez Les Crapheaps Roulez race, however, the Substandards [s]plumbed[/s] soared to new [s]depths[/s] heights, with their 36-straight-hour engine-swap thrash. AMC product + Engine Swap Hell = Ununhexium!
Nutjob Racing
Eschewing the trailer and driving that car from Brooklyn to Florida, in the winter, is definitely enough for Ununhexium (and Organizer’s Choice).
NSF Racing
After a few hours, however, the 318 done blowed up. That didn’t stop NSF Racing, though; they dispatched one of the team members to grab a 273 of dubious running condition from a garage 150 miles away, swapped engines, and got back out on the track. 142 glorious laps!
Clueless Racing
Before the Detroit Bull Oil Grand Prix, we told Clueless Racing that we’d give them enough residual value to maybe fix some of their busted parts, but only if they’d convert their CRX into a Borgward Hansa. “A Borg-what?” they asked… but then they came through. Of course, their engine blew up in that race (though they did win the Midwest Region points championship, which is worth some serious bragging rights). Finally, at the season-ender in Miami, the Clueless CRX stayed in the lead or right on the leader’s back bumper for most of the race; naturally, I composed a special song, sung to the tune of the Seven Dwarves’ “Heigh Ho:”
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Hooray, glad to see we made the list again. We also just made Jay Lamm's "Best of the Worst" list too: http://www.hagerty.com/Hagerty-Online/News/Features/All-articles/2011/01/14/LeMons-Lamms-picks?utm_source=ExactTarget&utm_medium=email&utm_term=January&utm_content=News&utm_campaign=Hagerty+Plus+Member+News
That Fiat 128 is my old car! I sold to a guy who totaled it (he's the one who put a pipe where the front bumper used to be). That wad of duct tape on the roof is holding down the aftermarket sunroof. BTW, that car was fast It had a 1500 with all the PBS go fast goodies in it.